Trick or Treat?

What to make of Tom Thibodeau's substitution patterns and shortened rotation?

Good morning! The Knicks are back at it tonight against the DEE-troit Pistons, who have looked downright competent this season and are coming off a road victory in Philly. If you’re in the New York area and want to come watch with me and the rest of the KFS crew, come on down to T2 Social on 42nd street, right down the block from Grand Central.

The boys from Juan, Please will be there helping set the vibe, and hopefully the Knicks will cooperate by moving above .500. No halftime zoom as a result, but I’ll be back on Monday.

Only downside: they may a BIG key piece for the game…

News & Notes

🏀 Karl-Anthony Towns is being listed as questionable with a sprained left wrist (which is thankfully his non-shooting hand). KAT hasn’t exactly been the most durable guy over the course of his career, so it’ll be interesting to see whether he is able to go here.

If he’s out, one would expect a return to the rotation for Ariel Hukporti, and maybe even some small ball featuring OG Anunoby at the five. That could be dangerous though, as the Pistons have been rebounding nearly a third of their own misses thus far this season. Hopefully KAT’s able to give it a go and this is much ado about nothing.

Check This Out…

Last week, we debuted a new addition to the KFS YouTube channel for this season called Film Session, which features the expertise of our X’s & O’s gurus. First up, we had DJ Zullo breaking down the Boston game, and then yesterday, it was Benjy Ritholtz explaining the main reason why New York’s offense was so much more effective against the Heat than they were vs the Cavs.

If you want to be more knowledgable about the Knicks and about basketball generally, and there’s only one thing you can make extra time for today, let it be this. You won’t be disappointed.

Trick or Treat?

We are now roughly five percent of the way into New York’s regular season journey. For as ridiculous as it was to try and draw #meaningful conclusions from the season opener in Boston, it’s only slightly less silly to try and do so with four games in the rearview mirror.

Which of course means that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I kid…sort of. As we’ve discussed, the Knicks are a rapidly evolving organism, using each game to test out new things. Against Boston, they took all the 2-pointers the Celtics allowed. Against Indy, everybody ate. Against Cleveland, they went hunting. Against Miami, the big guy got going. Who knows what will stand out tonight?

Putting aside play-style though, even a sample size of four games has given us a pretty good feel for some important tenets of New York’s approach, and that starts with the rotation and substitution patterns.